Captain Jack Raptor Journal 1
"Hey, mister James." The young girl with the teddy bear stood near the window of the hyperbaric chamber. She spoke through the intercom freely, with her own voice, without even having to touch the controls. "That's CAPTAIN James, to you. Actually, call me Captain Jack," I said. Captain Jack? What the hell? It came out automatically and reflexively, like a phrase recorded in the back of my memory. "Okay, mister Ja... erm, I mean, Captain Jack." She giggled saying the name. "What's up, Lili?" I said, still scratching my head. "Ow. Wait, one moment." My cyberarms were still barely functional, but the nanites, the autodoc grafted inside the chamber, and several key spare parts were fixing them up as I relaxed in my bubble. Unfortunately, the stump of one of the arms ended in a temporary hook, and I ended up cutting myself. I applied more synthskin with my good hand. "Oh, nothing. The boys thought I should check in on you." "I'm doing fine, all things considered. The med software says I should stay in this chamber for about a week, and it's been about six days. I could've died from the bends. I'm just waiting to get back to my ship, is all." "Oh. About that. The YDU took off with it." "What? WHAT?" I was dumbfounded. They barely have the spine to fire guns that fire one bullet at a time with each trigger-pull, let alone make off with my ship. Of all the... "Yeah," she continued, "About the same time we found you last week. Didn't you install that biometric thingamawhatzit?" "I was going to, after the run," I sighed and smacked my forehead. With the wrong hand. "Ow. One moment." I sighed again and applied more synthskin. My face is starting to look like I cut myself shaving and yet somehow managed to grow a beard at the same time. "Well, whenever things like that happen, the boys always say 'Well, it can't get worse, right?'" She squinted, as if she didn't really know what that meant. Ah, the naivete of youth. "You really shouldn't say that. It's like siren's call for trouble, and not the Odysseus kind." "What's an Odysseus? Whatever. Anyway, talk to you later!" She skipped away, like a little fairy hopped up on Sugar Bombs. "It can't get worse. Right." I said under my breath. And right on cue, things really did get worse. The cargo container that was holding the hyperbaric chamber on the docks suddenly shifted, and I tossed around like dirty laundry in spin cycle. "What? WHAT?" I said. "What? WHAT? Ow. One moment. Ow." What the hell was going on? I hooked myself to the side and pressed myself against the outside intercom interface. Accessing the remote cameras, I saw the container being lifted by a mother-lovin' crane, and I (and the container) was unceremoniously dumped on a Horizon MedCo pallet along with other crates full of medical supplies. The pallet was shifted by a gigantic cargo drone, and then a helidrone came down and started to airlifted it. "Alrighty, this is just too much." I extended my senses into the Resonance and tried to find a wireless access. Luckily, the helidrone had a jackpoint for remote control. I borrowed it. "Look, I need to be put BACK HOME, you big lug." I yelled at the helidrone in plain English, although I knew that it was being translated by my brain into machine language understandable by any drone. Being a technomancer is handy sometimes. "Stated request: HOME destination. Confirm?" said the helidrone in a Norwegian accent. (What? WHAT? Norwegian?) "Yes, put me BACK home!" The connection got cut off at that point, but I felt the container shifting direction and saw through the cameras that it was heading toward downtown Hong Kong. Well, at least it was heading in the right direction now. I sat back and waited. About an hour later, it landed me on what appeared to be a helipad of some sort. Another cargo drone drove up and picked up the MedCo pallet and started moving me. "No, no, no," I said. This must be what it feels like to be stuck in a Rube Goldberg machine in some hellish dystopian future. It's like the Arcology all over again. I went back to the intercom and tried to pick up a wireless access point again. No dice. I got an Aztechnology simsense feed (which pumped orgasmic emotions while advertising their "Choco-Taco" stuffer. Yuck.) and some news broadcast about some sort of large insect spirit terrorizing downtown Hong Kong, and the mobilized Wuxing Corporate mage force acting against it. "What? WHAT?" Where am I going? The last thing I saw before the container cameras were bathed in darkness was some cardboard boxes with the stamped words and RFID tag saying Shipping to Lagos, via Asante. "Oh boy... I have to get out of here." The beeping of the autodoc caught my attention. "Due to altitude change, Hyperbaric Chamber Convalescence Time has been adjusted according to the Marin Sliding Scale (21st edition of Sixth World Internal Medicine copyright DocWagon Enterprises All Rights Reserved) to 96 hours. It is advised that the subject stays in the chamber until the Convalescence Time has elapsed, or the following side effects may occur: excruciating pain (7 out of 10 on the adjusted Awakened Roswell Pain Threshold scale), aneurysms, embolism-related complications, and/or death. Thank you for choosing Horizon MedCo for your medical emergency needs." --- I spent the next few hours weighing my options. I could try to break out of the hyperbaric chamber, risking embolisms and probable death. But then that would still leave me on a rickety plane of some sort. I thought of the pressurized cabin, and extended my senses to the limited Wireless Matrix. I was able to slowly sneak my way into the airplane pressure systems and raise the cabin pressure manually. The crew and passengers of this plane would probably complain of stuffy ears, but it would be safe for me to exit. Next, I had to finish the repairs on my cyberarms. Slicing off bits of my diving armor, I manually made the rest of the adjustments needed to graft on a new cyberhand. It was a bit patchwork, but the Machine sprite in the autodoc was most helpful. Of course, my appearance was dreadful, and I was looking more like a refugee than a civilian, so I decided on a makeshift cloak. Maybe the crew would think I was sick, or something. As I climbed into the cabin, in a torn diving suit with a makeshift cloak made of my sheets, I said, "Dammit, I need a drink." I looked at the stunned passengers and saw that all of the seats were full, amazingly enough. I coughed convincingly and said "I just came in from the loo, and I think I have VITAS, erm, Four." That seemed to clear out a lot of seats, as the passengers moved to get out of breathing range. I covered my face with the diving mask, hoping that it would pass as a respirator and plopped down into a seat that suddenly became available when the unfortunate elven couple sitting there decided they'd rather stand than risk a VITAS infection. Then a young lady moved into the seat next to me. She was wearing Horizon garb (ugh, Horizon? Really?) and had an earnest look about her. "Don't worry, I'm a nurse. Open your mouth and say ahhh." After a brief examination, which I was happy to oblige, she said under her breath "You don't really have VITAS, do you?" "Is it that obvious?" The Watcher whispered into my ear saying "Trust her, Jack. She knows you're lying, but she'll put up with your bullshit." "It's pretty convincing, actually. You could be a natural at being a sick patient." "Really?" I was pretty proud of that, and I decided to cower in my "sick patient" pose again. "No. But on the plus side, we both have first class seats now, and I won't have to deal with that insufferable pig sitting next to me in coach." "Ah. Capital. I'm Captain Jack Raptor, by the way. The best pirate you've never met." "I don't care," she turned facing forward, suddenly interested in her medical journal. "Well, Ms. Don't Care. Pleasure doing business with you." I settled into my seat, remembering to cough a few times.